Why men don’t know how to behave around women. Part 1.

Men have so much to navigate in this day and age. Women have some measure of equality and power. We can decide some things for ourselves and we can work and have sex without getting pregnant if we want. We can also decide to stay home and raise our kids or work in a high powered career that takes us away from our loved ones for days at a time. And you, dear male friend, aren’t supposed to judge any of it. You are supposed to say ‘yes dear’ and ‘whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy’ or something along those lines, because to have an opinion makes you against equality for women.

Don’t worry guys. If you don’t know what to do it’s probably because we don’t know what to do. Women are still going through a lot of infighting. We can’t decide if it is okay to work outside the home or if it means you don’t really love your kids that much. We can’t decide if we should hang on to youth using botox and dressing like we are still 24, or if we need to let our hair go grey naturally and hide our no longer 24 year old bodies away. And not only can we not decide, we are downright nasty about it. Do you know how many articles are written about what you should not wear after the age of 30! 30! I mean, I think that means women can wear reasonably attractive attire for all of, what, 10 years? Almost every article that talks about what we should look like or talk like or dress like is written by women for women. We still hate ourselves and each other. So, of course when you, male friend, has any thoughts about this at all we simply cannot take it.

Everyone’s got the answer for everyone else. Stay home and raise kids because otherwise we will become a nation of degenerates. Go out and work so your kids will see that women can be ‘more’ than just wives and mothers! Blah blah blah blah blah.

You know what? Shut up. If we can’t make up our minds as to how we want to treat each other how will men know how to treat us? When we were all just a group ‘women’ and the oddball one would go off and have a job, it was much easier. But now it is so confusing with all the variations of how we are and what we do and don’t do.

Sometimes I want a guy to open my doors for me and carry things. Other times I yell “I am not an invalid!” How is this fair?

I have two boys. I want them to be men. I want them to be men in the traditional sense – chivalrous, caring, kind and I want them to be able to lift heavy things and open doors and make money. I know that teaching them how to be men is a difficult endeavor in this day and age, and a dangerous one too. But my boys share my experiences as a minority woman as well and all I know is how to make my way in a world where I’m never really sure of the rules. It’s probably important, now, for us to be able to judge each person as they come to us because otherwise, it will just get messier.

None of us is ‘supposed’ to be anything other than not a total dick to people who don’t deserve it. If we can start to work on that, maybe the rest will come.